A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
by singingstarryknights
Summary: It's always at the corner of 4th and Freemont. SaraGreg. Songfic. One Shot.


One look at the building, and Sara knew it was going to be one of _those_ shifts.

_It's these substandard motels on the corner of 4th and Freemont Street. _

_Appealing only because they are just that un-appealing_

_Any practiced catholic would cross themselves upon entering. _

_The rooms have a hint of asbestos and maybe just a dash of formaldehyde, _

_And the habit of decomposing right before your very eyes._

She wondered what on earth would motivate a woman to allow a man to bring her to such a shithole. Pushing a reddish brown curl out of her eyes, she glanced at the man beside her, taking in his broken hearted expression as his eyes scanned one of the victims laying haphazardly in a pool of her own blood. She reached out to him discreetly, letting her fingers come into gentle contact with the fabric of his black field vest, by his hip.

"Greg." He turned to her distractedly, meeting her gaze with a mixture of despondency over the nature of the victim, and a brand of professional determination that he had come to subscribe to while working under her careful supervision months before.

"Scenes like this make me want to crawl back to the lab." He turned back away from her, waiting for Brass to finish taking the motel manager's statement before leaving her side and closing the distance between himself and the older man. She glanced around the shabby room, cringing as she noted the structure seemed to have a TOD somewhere in the ballpark of 1973. She glanced at the other vic, frowning as she recognized him from tacky bulletin boards all over the city. He was that malpractice lawyer from Henderson. The one that would "get you money you deserve and that's that." Greg would know his name, she tried to think of it and only came up blank. Everything around her was decaying in slow motion, and vaguely, she wondered when the maggots were going to show up.

_Along with the people inside_

_What a wonderful caricature of intimacy_

_Inside, what a wonderful caricature of intimacy_

This was just one more DB that he had processed in the year that had passed between the Sherlock Holmes case, and shift tonight. But Greg couldn't help but feel his heart break as he nodded a thanks to David, who had moved on to the male DB, after taking the liver temp of the young female victim before him. Greg's eyes swept over her clothing, a provocative teddy, meant to be worn by a smoldering temptress, not an innocent teenager.

Something glittery by her breast caught his attention, and he reached for his tweezers. He extracted at first what he thought was a string of Mardi Gras beads, but as he pulled the length out, he found his heart breaking even more, not even bothering to glance at the pewter crucifixion as it dragged across her cooling, motionless chest. He found himself wondering what the results of her rape kit would be. Glancing quickly at the male DB Sara was crouching over with David, perhaps he already knew.

Not even Christ could have saved her from the death oozing from the walls of the corroding motel room.

_Tonight tenants range from: a lawyer and a virgin _

_Accessorizing with a rosary tucked inside her lingerie _

_She's getting a job at the firm come Monday._

_The Mrs. will stay with the cheating attorney_

_moonlighting aside, she really needs his money._

_Oh, wonderful caricature of intimacy._

Brass had heard a lot of bullshit in his years as a detective. This woman was telling the truth. Mrs. Reilley had not exhibited any sings of surprise when he had told her about the young female victim they had found in her dead husband's motel room. She knew about the whoring and drinking and colorful excursions. "Big Mac" Reilley, for all his pungent unattractiveness, was a powerful man in the world of malpractice lawsuits. Business, he had always told her. Doctors had become lethargic as of late, and she could only assume that her husband was busy with clients, even though she saw the credit card receipts for the value packs of Trojans from convenience stores every month. Always, she recounted. Always the same motel. The manager verified that Big Mac was good for business.

He asked her if she recognized the female vic, showed her the autopsy photo.

_Yeah._

Mrs. Reilley nonchalantly pulled out of her purse a date book, and told him her husband had had an appointment with a prospective employee, to finish off the interview he had started a few days ago. Obviously, he had meant to finish off a few other things as well, she had offered dryly. She explained that Mac had begun to interview for office positions a few weeks back. In her narrative of her husband's debauchery, she gestured widely, sweeping her hand along, knocking over her purse, sending its contents sprawling across Brass' desk. Her secret tumbled out casually, landing beside her packet of tissues and her crusty scarlet lipstick.

_And not to mention, the constable, and his proposition, for that "virgin"_

_Yes, the one the lawyer met with on "strictly business"_

_as he said to the Mrs. Well, only hours before,_

_after he had left, she was fixing her face in a compact._

_There was a terrible crash _

Between her and the badge 

_She spilled her purse and her bag, and held a "purse" of a different kind._

Two in the morgue, one in the pen, that was the rumor that accompanied Dr. Robbins as he watched David rinse the young girl's body with the spray hose. He snorted, laughing to himself. Greg had mentioned finding a rosary tucked inside the suggestive lingerie they had removed to process the body for trace. The cool water slid off the curves of her hips, still holding the hint of stretch marks, meaning these curves were new, she was young. Dr. Robbins noted that in the faint light, that the female vic was being rejected, almost, by the water from David's hose, and if he remembered correctly, wasn't that a sign of innocence? No, it was the absence of innocence. The innocent sank in water, at least they did according to Arthur Miller.

The results from the rape kit beeped in the fax machine, and he glanced at them, noting that Greg's virgin here, was in fact not a virgin any longer. Positive for rape. There had been a lot of these lately. Lots of young girls laying on his table, losing their lives for a chance at a façade of confidence, widening their legs to fatten their checkbooks. Absently he wondered what had become of the world.

_Along with the people inside_

_What a wonderful caricature of intimacy_

_Inside, what a wonderful caricature of intimacy_

Greg slammed down the stack of crime scene photos onto the layout table, weary of the string of cases they had had in the past few months that followed this sort of prototype. He hated Vegas. He was sure, however, that intimate killings such as these were commonplace everywhere else as well. If he wasn't here, it would be the same scene somewhere else, with varying degrees of tacky wallpaper masking the asbestos. This was his least favorite type of crime scene, and he and Sara would be wading through it for days.

_There are no raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses. _

_It's sleeping with roaches and taking best guesses _

_At the shade of the sheets and before all the stains_

_And a few more of your least favorite things._

Sara hung the suggestive teddy in the drying room before beginning to process the sheets from the bed. She cringed as the ALS showed that the fabric of her evidence was crusted over with liberal samples of what could only be semen. She began circling the stains, and frowned halfway through the second sheet when her Sharpie went dry from use.

Hopefully Greg would understand if she didn't want to shed her clothes tonight. Right now, the stench of sex and sin was overwhelming her, and she had to step out of the room to fill her lungs with air free of pheromones of a manipulative power hungry mogul and his teenaged prey. They would both need a night off from their usual activities after this one.

_Raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses_

_It's sleeping with roaches and taking best guesses _

_At the shade of the sheets and before all the stains_

_And a few more of your least favorite things._

Greg winced at the close up shots of the delicate burn mark along the female DB's cheek, and snatched it up, wandering out into the halls to find Bobby. There was only one thing that made a burn like that.

"Looks like an impression of a Ruger P345 Compact .45 Automatic. Which is what your bullet came from. Doc sent it up for trace. Brass said the wife is in holding for possession, and while they were searching for paraphernalia, they came across this little beauty." Bobby held up a bagged firearm, a Ruger P345. "Hodges collected the trace from it, said he put it through GCMS about twenty minutes ago. I shot a comparison round, striations match."

"Intimate slaughter then."

"Absolutely."

_Raindrops on roses and the girls in white dresses_

_And the sleeping with the roaches and the taking best guesses _

_At the shade of the sheets and before all the stains_

_And a few more of your least favorite things._

Long after shift was over, Sara relaxed into the fluffy comforter as the bed dipped only just under Greg's weight on the other side. She rolled over, away from him, still feeling queasy from the crusty sheets, but he slid a hand around her hip, and pulled her against him, settling down against her back. She winced as he slipped an arm under her pillow, and pressed the length of his body against the length of hers. She opened her mouth to protest, but he pressed a kiss to her shoulder, and whispered softly into her ear.

"I just want to feel you breathe." She smiled faintly at his words, and laid his free arm across her chest, holding it against her with both hands, and relaxing into his embrace.

"Cases like that, they're just awful."

"And it won't go away, like," He paused, trying to find the right words. "Like a fever you can't sweat out. Weighs on your conscious, steals your energy, leaves you drained, and at the end of the day, you still can't function properly."

"Tomorrow will be better."

"Tomorrow will just be more of the same." His whisper tickled her neck, but she realized this case had changed him. Something about that girl had broken Greg's spirit, and she vaguely wondered if he would ever be anything other than the serious, weary, shattered man that he was right now. She snuggled into his arms, and listened to his breathing become even beside her. One day at a time.

_What a wonderful caricature of intimacy_

Inside, what a wonderful caricature of intimacy 

…

A/N: song is 'Build God, Then We'll Talk' off of Panic! At the Disco's album A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. For ObsessedTWFan, who mentioned this song in a review for 'Transitions' a while back… This hasn't left me alone since. Depressing I know, sorry. Don't usually do or even ;like songfics… but it wouldn't leave me alone.


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